Metal Gear Solid Noob Diaries #9: Eva, Ocelot and Khrushchev

Welcome to the Metal Gear Noob Diaries. This is the recounting of my experience through the MGS series from MGS2: Sons of Liberty all the way to MGSV: Ground Zeroes. I’ll be updating every so often with new thoughts on sections of the games and taking a look back at memorable and enjoyable moments. I’ve never played the series before, so for the fans out there it could be an amusing tale of one noob’s journey, while those as green as myself could well learn a little about the mad world of MGS. Enjoy!

Short one today:

So it’s right into the action following the James Bond intro. Well, the cutscene was only about 10 minutes long, which is pretty direct relatively speaking. It was a good cutscene though - not that I’ve actually encountered a bad cutscene yet - setting up the core part of the game. Here’s the gist:

-Following the nuclear explosion at the end of the prologue, the Russians are suspicious that America launched the nuke. Khrushchev is threatening a nuclear war that he won’t be able to prevent.
-The only way to stop the war is if America can prove that it was the defecting Boss and her associates that launched the nuke, not the US government.
-Bonus points are also up for taking out Colonel Volgin, whom Kruschev rightly believes is plotting to overthrow his leadership.
-So Naked Snake (a.k.a. Big Boss) and the team are sent into the region once again to prevent a nuclear war and also clear their name. The Boss needs to be killed/captured in Russian territory, the British scientist Sokolov needs to be rescued and Volgin needs to bite the dust. It’s a lot to handle really, but it looks like he’s the man for the job.

I didn’t get a chance to play all that much today, but I am starting to get to grips with some of the new mechanics. The camouflage system still isn’t appealing to me on the whole, it seems a little two-dimensional. It is, however, quite amusing to quickly cover Snake in blacks and creep through the night, the guards completely unaware of your presence despite crawling past their feet.

There are some other small things I’m liking. The ability to press R1 and see through Snake’s eyes has been implemented much more thoughtfully in this game. There were a couple of cool moments during this playthrough using this mechanic - one in which Snake looks up at The Boss and sees a weird ghostly figure behind her (creeepy), and another amusing moment in which Snake is caught gazing at new character Eva’s chest. Smooth.

The section I did play was good fun and based more around action than stealth. Tasked with knocking off several members of team Ocelot, I had to blast my way out of some ruins with the help of my AK-47. It was nice to ‘go loud’ and not be ashamed of my failure to ‘go quiet’ for once, and this was something that modern games have prepared me for. The section ended with another awesome cutscene in which Ocelot himself reappeared, only to be thwarted by Eva and her silky motorbike skills. I don’t know what happened to the laws of physics during that scene, but I suppose it’s a fool’s errand to try to understand how she did a bike backflip just by driving up Ocelot’s face.